Free Blessed Are the Wholly Broken by Melinda Clayton Page A

Your Honor, if it pleases the Court, can we adjourn and continue this after lunch?
     
    The Court:  We’ll take a short recess and come back at one o’clock. Counselor, you need to get your defendant under control over there.
     

Chapter 18:  June 3, 2012—The Arrest
     
    “I hadn’t known about the miscarriages,” Brian repeated, “but now that I do, a lot of things make sense. Anna didn’t look well when I came to see you. Difficult pregnancy, you said, but even at the time I thought it was more than that. She must have been exhausted, Phil. Three pregnancies in such a short time, not to mention the heartbreak. I wish I’d known. I wish you had told me.”
    She was exhausted, yes, and quietly sad. I had not known how to comfort her. It was a very trying time, and though we hadn’t known it, the worst was still to come.
    “We didn’t see the point in telling anyone about the miscarriages,” I said. “Our families knew, of course, but no one else did. Anna was private, you know that. She had been through so much; we both just wanted to put it behind us the best we could and move forward.”
    “And then Jeffrey,” he said.
    “Yes. And then Jeffrey.”
    “Not now, Phillip,” he said, and I looked at him, noting for the first time how worn he seemed. He sat across from me, elbows on the table, hands cradling his face. An image flashed through my mind, a picture of a much younger Brian standing with elbows propped on the fence enclosing the practice field. He had done that often our sophomore year, watched his old teammates practice without him.
    In the beginning they’d come over to speak with him, invite him to join them after practice, but after a while they moved on, leaving Brian to watch them alone. It must have been hard, I reflected, being left behind. But Brian never spoke of it, and by our junior year he no longer haunted the practice field.
    Something in his expression as he regarded me across the scuffed table reminded me of that time. Maybe it was because in both instances he’d lost what he’d come to regard as family.
    Brian hadn’t wanted to speak of his loss back then, and he didn’t want me to speak of it now. He didn’t want me to speak of Jeffrey.
    “I’ll come tomorrow,” he said, standing. “I just need some time to think about all this, Phil. It hasn’t sunk in; it’s too much.”
    I nodded. “Will you see Peter?”
    “Of course. And I’ll do some checking, look into a lawyer for you.”
    I stood as he hoisted his briefcase and motioned for the guard. “We’ll get through this, Phil,” he said. “We’ll figure it out.”
    That was Brian, aligning himself with me as he always had. I watched him go before the guard snapped the cuffs back on and led me away. Truthfully, at that moment I didn’t see how Brian could help me; he looked as lost as I felt.
     

Chapter 19:  September, 2000
     
    When the by-now-familiar symptoms presented again, just a few short weeks after Anna’s second miscarriage, we agreed to tell no one. We didn’t want to get our families’ hopes up again only to have them dashed, but it was more than that. We also didn’t want to have to make that terrible phone call again, the one signifying the end of everything. The second time had been painful enough; I couldn’t imagine a third.
    There was no joy in the pregnancy those first months. I know how that must sound, but by that point we had already accepted Anna would not carry to term. Whereas in the past we’d made plans to decorate the nursery, this time we made plans for the inevitable trip to the hospital. Anna kept a small overnight bag packed and in the car, not in anticipation of a midnight trip to the hospital to meet our new baby, but because the previous two times I’d had to return home for a change of clothes lest Anna take leave of the hospital wearing the same bloody clothes in which she’d arrived.
    As with the previous two pregnancies, Anna was horribly sick the first couple